Skynet

$23,698,655.93 is a large number.

A very large number indeed.

Its the sort of number which normally precedes the fantasy lottery game - what would I do if I won gazillions on the lotto? A big house? Boat? Aston Martin? Give some to the family, splash the cash then bugger off and live somewhere sunny where you look great and everyone laughs at your jokes.

Earlier this year this sum of money could have bought you one book.

A paperback book.

A not very rare paperback book.

A not very rare paperback book about the breeding habits of flies.

The world of Amazon went mad for a short while and created its own, single item, Tulip bubble, for Peter Lawrence’s The making of a Fly.

This was not the result of a deranged employee nor a devious student up to hi-jinx.

No this was the work of a faceless/nameless/emotionless algorithm, one which was programmed to set the pricing of products on Amazon.

Without wanting to keep typing the word algorithm I will, for the purposes of simplicity, call it ‘Skynet’

Skynet was originally programmed to ensure that the pricing of company A’s products was always priced slightly above company B’s pricing for the same product.

The reason for this was that company A did not actually have the product, in fact it had nothing other than Skynet and a bank account. It would buy the product from company B, ship the product to the purchaser and earn a small margin.

Company B’s Algorithm, lets call it Matrix, was also programmed to do the same thing and hey presto! We have a mirror, looking on a mirror, on a mirror, on a mirror…..

Skynet and Matrix slugged it out over a couple of days before someone, a human someone, called Sarah, stepped in and pulled the plug.

The result was a slightly overpriced book and an interesting insight into how computers are quietly ruling the world.

Imagine if Skynet was set loose on air traffic control, or oil production or city planning.

Imagine if someone allowed Skynet to take control of the military in country A and the Matrix was rolled out in country B?

I paid good money to watch Alien vs Predator and it was shite. I have heard that Cowboys vs Aliens is also not worth the admission fee.

Skynet vs Matrix anyone?

Milk and Honey

A suicide bomber is, by definition, a first timer.

I cannot imagine there is much opportunity to simulate or practice these skills although I do remember hearing about the Kamikaze pilot who returned from 5 missions.

I don’t know what the Japanese for abject failure is but the pilot probably does.

Having little experience in such activities I cannot recommend or otherwise but if it appeals to you could I suggest trying a little self harm first? Just to get a taster. This has to be preferable to jumping immediately into wholesale murder and suicide. It’s a big step and you need to be sure.

Last weekends events in the land of Trolls have left me wondering again about the motivation behind such grotesque acts of murder. Not necessarily the Norwegian tragedy where the motivation appears to be clear, mad but clear. I’m thinking about the other 'normal' type of mass murderers - the Jihadist.

Now before I start I must point out that I know nothing about the Koran. I have absolutely no right whatsoever to criticize, praise or otherwise comment on the work. I do however have access to Google so will give it a go and try to find out what’s on offer in the afterlife.

First stop I want to check on the claim of 72 virgins which should be waiting for me should I decide to wear underpants lined with semtex in a crowded place and then start a small fire in my groin.

After a lengthy 30 seconds of research I have found that the Koran, which from this point on will be known as the Qur'an, tells me I will receive a gazillion servants and 72 Houri.

Houri is a word found in the Qura'an which is has a literal translation of 'white eyed'. It has subsequently been translated in a number of different ways from the racy 'restrained in their glances' right through to the almost pornographic 'splendid', at no time during my exhaustive search did I find mention of them being virgins.

So lets just assume they are virgins, restrained and splendid. Another assumption I am making here is that they are of the female variety, not the spotty, greasy haired, male variety.

So I get 72 virgins, why? If you were writing the Quoo'ran, would you choose virgins to inhabit your version of paradise?

My limited interactions with them as a teenager were not particularly favourable nor successful for that matter and ultimately I was very happy to grow up and leave that particular female demographic behind. No, if we are playing a game of paradise creation here I don’t think I would choose virgins to populate it, I also wouldn't choose 72. I would choose a significantly smaller number and make up the balance with my mates to have a laugh with or watch some celestial football.

I guess what I’m missing here is how rigid the rules are, can I mix n match within the total headcount on offer? During my deep study I saw nothing on rules.

What next? I have a few very sexy ladies, a lot of people to do stuff for me and my mates around to have a beer or two with me.

Or can I? - All the Muslim people I know don't drink alcohol.

The Queer'an states in paradise there will be rivers running with wine but it also tells us we should not drink wine or other intoxicants. The key to these seemingly contradictory statements appears to be the intoxication element - if you could drink bucket loads of wine and not be intoxicated that would be ok, however being intoxicated is the big no-no.

So the rivers in Paradise will be running with non-alcoholic wine and you can drink as much of this as you like. Although it makes no mention of Guinness, I presume the rules still apply.

Anything else? Well quite a lot actually - food, milk, honey, jewels, everlasting youth, happiness and peace.

All in, not a bad place to end up - shame about the wine but I guess you cant have everything.

The reason I started this PHD level analysis of the Quick'ran was to understand the motivation behind your average, common-or-garden, Jihadist martyr.

Putting myself in their explosive shoes for a minute I would of course say no, no way. I need a little more definitive proof, given what I was about to do. I would also try to negotiate on the wine thing.

Faith is the element I am missing here - in very simple terms you either believe or you don’t.

Other than religious writings or a trip to the casino nothing in life is based on pure faith.

In my working life I have never signed a contract on faith, I have never started on a journey from A-B trusting faith to get me there, I have never planned or done anything with its pure outcome down to faith so why should I give up my life and take a bunch of other folks with me - purely on faith? Faith that a book written some 1,500 years ago is correct.

Personally I find it inconceivable that anyone would carry out such acts at all, let alone on the strength of such weak evidence and its this which has lead me to believe there must be something else. There has to be something else which drives a young man to walk into a cafe in Jerusalem and indiscriminately kill innocent people, women, children and himself into the bargain.

Could it be that the young man in question has nothing else? Perhaps the Qur'an and its teachings is nothing more than a framework, the Imam who teaches this young man simply provides some current context. Perhaps it’s the situation in Palestine where unemployment, hopelessness and helicopter gunships are his life - he has nothing else. Perhaps the Israeli strength with Western backing becomes too much, whichever way he turns he is blocked either physically or metaphorically. I don’t believe for an instant this young man absolutely believes in the 72 Houri or the milk and honey but his circumstances have lead him to this situation and the promises of the afterlife are there as a potential silver lining, just in case.

Clearly I don’t have the answer but would suggest that by truly understanding their motivations before we state that we are standing 'shoulder to shoulder' with Israel or sending the bombers and troops in has to be preferable to the current situation we find ourselves in.

‘We don’t discuss or negotiate with terrorists’ - well perhaps the time has come to start.

Agent Provocateur

I am a slut - I am proud to be a SLUT! - proclaimed the placard.

This, better said after the watershed, statement had been written in what looked like lipstick and was slowly moving down a busy London street along with a few thousand other, equally in your face, placards.

The ladies carrying these placards were dressed appropriately for what was Slutwalk, UK.

Slutwalk has now spanned the globe.

It all started when an extremely ill advised Canadian policeman told some students to avoid "dressing up as sluts" to avoid unwanted attention.

All over the world, well the US, Canada and now the UK (its not taken off in Iran apparently), women are dressing up, or down as the case is, to march though the streets demanding that the abusers and not the abused are blamed, and quite right too.

Of course there is a but coming and without coming across all Ken Clark I would like to ask the simple question - where is good old fashioned common sense in all of this?

I totally get that just because a lady is wearing sexy clothing it does not mean she is in any way asking for attention.

I get, to paraphrase another placard, that Cleavage is not Consent.

I am also fully on-board with everyone should be allowed to wear whatever the hell they like without fear of abuse or worse.

They are all correct, the world should be a perfect place and if I decided to walk through the Bronx, at night, wearing my finest Etonian school uniform I should be left in peace to go about my business. Unfortunately, however, the last time I looked it isn't and I most definitely wouldn't - why not? Because I would be using my common sense, the skill which helps me out when faced with difficult dilemmas such as, do I really want to swan dive off that cliff, or should I really stand up in the High Street and sing out loud just because I feel the urge, which I do often.

If you go out looking like Britney wearing nothing but a few stick on stars then you are going to get looked at, laughed at and potentially worse - so why would you? I am not in any way condoning such behaviour, but I am wise enough to know it goes on and frankly so should you Britney-woman.

If, god forbid, something bad did happen to Britney then of course this is wrong, it would take a particularly low minded person to say she had it coming, but why would you want to put yourself at risk in the first place?

A few years ago, my wife and I were walking outside the Egyptian museum in Cairo, skirting the square which was the backdrop to the recent riots. Walking towards us was a couple of young women, basically wearing clothing which would have been seen as risqué during the Slutwalk - i.e. very little. As they passed I overheard them complaining loudly about the looks and derogatory remarks they were receiving as they exercised their god given right to sightsee almost nude in a fiercely muslim country.

It baffles me, it really does, why common sense is not used more often. It works, its free and in general most people have it

However correct the banners and ladies parading through London were I doubt very much they will do much to change the situation. Until the time we can all live how we want, where we want and ebony and ivory are in perfect harmony, side by side on my piano, I will continue using common sense to avoid undesirable situations.

I would suggest everyone else does the same.

Judgement Day

So apparently the world was due to end, as I sit here typing, yesterday.

Looking around, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the little stream next to my house is babbling and my son is trying to figure out if our pet rabbits like to eat stones. All in all, if this is the end of the world then I’m not sure what all the fuss was about.

I have to add that scheduling it on a weekend was also pretty thoughtful of god.

No, of course the world didn’t end yesterday just because some mental preacher from the arse-end of America decides this will be the case. Apparently he worked out the date of damnation by interpreting the bible, in particular the concept that one day in gods time = 1,000 years in human time. A similar concept to dog years, just a bit longer.

This god-year concept allows Harold Camping, the stupidly named evangelist at the center of these claims, to calculate forward from the flood of Noah - the date of which according to him has been precisely proved at 4,990BC. This date is completely accurate his website states without offering any further proof.

From this point, with these facts (wild assumptions) it’s a case of straightforward addition which would brings us to May 21st 2011 - judgement day. This is the day a great earthquake will shake the earth, then 150 days from this earthquake the world will be destroyed.

Now it’s easy for me with the benefit of hindsight to point out that nothing happened yesterday but that aside there are some other, minor flaws, in what is otherwise a clearly well thought out and robust theory.

1. The concept of god-years, this is taken from a passage quoting god which reads something like ‘for me a day is like a 1,000 years’. I for one don’t read this a definitive proof that god years exist, I say shit like this all the time. That meeting went on forever. The weekend flew by – it only felt like a couple of hours. Could it be that god was just pointing out, given all the work he needs to get done, that it just felt like a 1,000 years.

Perhaps the task of Creation was so fucking dull it just felt like a 1,000 years.

2. Let’s assume for a second that god years do exist then my next issue is - why doesn’t this apply to the 150 days between earthquake and destruction? If he was to tell me that actually the world will end, not this October but 150,000 years from yesterday I would be distinctly less twitchy. Alternatively, perhaps he got his decimals confused and what god actually meant to say was 0.15 days or roughly 1 ½ hours (god time). With such ambiguity existing can you imagine the panic and confusion back when god is proclaiming all this:

A hill somewhere dusty and desert-like. Dark leaden clouds hang heavy above - awaiting a signal from the almighty. There’s discord within the assembled crowd, one brave man, bearded and wearing a dust covered sheet steps forward.

'With the greatest respect god, erm, but that’s not really giving us much time is it?'

God looks down at the man and around at his gathered flock, he smiles at their childlike logic.

'But lo hear me proper my child, for me 1 day is a thousand of your earth-years. 1 ½ hours is 150 days' he smiles warmly

'No I got that piece god, but still, 7 days, 150 days? – it’s not that long, really. Is it 7 days and 150 days of your days or our days? – its sorta, kinda, well, important you know'

He smiles again, this time trying to understand the confusion
'My days' he says quietly and then whispers to a nearby angel hovering at his shoulder 'It is isn’t it?'

The crowd visibly relaxes, after a few seconds a particularly smart small child shouts out proudly '2011?' (or he would’ve shouted this if he knew that that day was actually recorded in reverse around a date nearly 5,000 years in the future when someone called Jesus would be born).

God looks down at the small child and booms loudly 'well done my child'.

There is back smacking and high 5'ing all around, people are starting to move away, relieved and the cloud still sits there, intact.

The child meekly approaches god.

'So if that’s right god, then the actual, real, bonafide, end of the world will be, 2011 plus 150,000 years, right?'.

God looks to the angel, the angel just shrugs.

A little irritated now he responds 'My child, do not worry yourself with such matters, mathematics, science and logic are not part of the deal. Faith in your lord is all that matters, ok?'

The child looks up disappointed 'ok, I guess' and then starts to walk away, kicking the sand, deep in thought. He suddenly turns around, a big smile on his face.

'The year AD152,011?'

'Shut the fuck up would you?' With that god ascends back up, pissed off.

It starts to rain.

If the world is to end then so be it, if it was yesterday or in 150,000 years from now, there is not a lot you or I could do about it so what’s the point of worrying, or for that matter knowing about it.

I would suggest that given I am capable of typing this in the sunshine on a balmy Sunday afternoon Mr Camping will be keeping a very low profile right now.

I am also very sure that anyone who converted, in a last ditch attempt to cover all bases, will be significantly less likely to do so again and this leaves me wondering as to the motivation to speak out in the first place…

Alexander vs Osama

So they got him - the worlds most wanted man is dead, hurrah!

Some will mourn, a lot will celebrate but most, like me will think good and then move on. Lets face it he was a very bad man and deserved to die but regardless, I feel slightly uncomfortable watching the crowds high 5-ing outside the White House.

A breathless, red faced, Buck Howitzer, truck driver from Minnesota, someone who lives at the bloater end of the portly scale, perfectly captures my unease - "fuck yeh, we got him, God Bless America, Navy Seals, yeh, fucking murdering rag-head and anyone who disagrees with me is a homosexual-liberal-communist, ok?" a thin sliver of saliva runs down his chin(s) as he shouts at the night sky.

Its that same cringing feeling I get when see the Sun's infamous headline the morning after the Belgrano was sent to the bottom of the South Atlantic- probably a good thing but certainly not a wild celebration moment.

Anyhow, does anyone know who is now number one?

I assume this will be the person who has been rather anonymously sitting at number two all this time but other than this simple deduction I have no idea who he is. I am assuming he or she will probably have a beard, be brown-ish and most likely live in a country ending with "istan".

Its not really the worlds most wanted man though is it?

Its the US's (and their friends) most wanted list, I doubt very much Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would subscribe to the same list. He probably has his own list chock full of Israelis, Kim Jong Il 's will have everyone squashed into a top 10. You can imagine the question - does a nation of 240Million count as 1 or do we need to create a top 250Million?

No, to be more specific its the FBI's most wanted list and having just browsed through the mug shots I know know who is number 2 (or number 1 now). Firstly I was very wrong about his colour and ethnicity - its a very white chap called James J Bulger or "Whitey", yes really, to his friends. He is wanted for doing bad things, a lot of bad things, Goodfella style, back in the 1970s.

Looking down his list of crimes, 19 counts of murder, drugs, organised crime, jail, girls and pasta - its all there waiting to hit the big screen soon. James will be shown as a bad man of course, but with a good heart. He only kills when necessary and only other criminals, never civilian people and never, never women or kids. Yes he has his faults, yes he is a bad man but we will root for him right up until the end when the "good" guys get him or not as the case actually is.

Buck of course will be watching intently, BBQ Chicken Licken sauce dripping off his fingers as he secretly wishes he was running around New York in the 1970s.

I am not, of course, comparing this man with Osama Bin Laden. He was a man to be feared and planned the deaths of innocent people indiscriminately. However I am questioning who or what determines when someone is shown as a hero, anti-hero, villain or monster.

Alexander the Great is remembered as one of the greatest leaders of antiquity, revered even, but was responsible for at least, at least, 250,000 non-combatant deaths - basically that's women and kids to you and I.

No matter which way I try to spin this I find it pretty hard to shine a positive light on this but somehow Alexander has managed to do so.

Perhaps in time Osama, Hitler and Stalin will be seen in a similar light but I somehow doubt it.

Churchill hit the nail on the head when he said that "history is written by the victors" and this in the long run will prove to be Osama's undoing - he lost.

Banana Skin

I stood there, coffee in one hand and money in the other.

Walking away would have been the simple option, but I stood there waiting to pay my $1.50 for the coffee. No one came. As I waited a very tall, very well dressed man walked by, we nodded quietly towards each other as men do.

"Excuse me, you don't happen to know where I should leave my money do you" I asked him indicating to the coffee in my hand and the unmanned booth.

He turned and looked at me as if I had just told him I had slept with his mother and you wouldn't believe the things she did.

"I don't work here" he replied staring me down, he was considerably bigger than me.

"Ok" I said sheepishly and quickly turned away.

What I hadn't realised and was only quietly told later by a colleague, in that hushed, I hate to tell you this but your B.O is a problem sort of way, was that he actually thought, I thought, he worked there because of the colour of his skin. You see, what my stupid Scottish brain hadn't taken into account was that I was in California and the tall, good looking, well dressed person I had asked was, as a friend of mine once said, not quite white or in other words, very black.

The underlying message here was, don't assume I serve coffee just on account of the colour of my skin. The problem was I didn't and hadn't.

Eventually I just left my money next to the sugar and walked away, too scared to ask anyone else.

That was California, probably the most race sensitive place on earth. I should have known but being the stupid, teuchter that I am I just did what I normally do and that is treat everyone the same, regardless of race, which I sorta thought what was supposed to happen.

The Tartan Army fell foul of this at the weekend. A banana skin was thrown onto the pitch at some point during the Brazil v Scotland game and the new Brazilian superstar in the making Neymar shouted racism. He complained that he had been jeered throughout the game and there is no place for racism in football.

Absolutely Neymar, we all concur with that sentiment along with the Miss Iowa winner who states that she wants world peace - both very worthy sentiments.

You see the problem is, they weren't jeering you because of your skin colour Neymar. They were jeering you because every time someone brushed against you you fell to the floor like your legs had been cut off, they were jeering you because you rolled around the grass in agony then jumped up to take the resulting free kick.

Oh and they were also jeering you because of that stupid fucking haircut.

Now, another thing about being Scottish is that we understand our place in the footballing world. We are the underdog, we are going to lose, we know that, however we will also make a lot of noise and party as hard as if we had won - that is the point of the whole thing. If we win every so often then even better but ultimately we are going to have a good time, win or lose. The abuse from the terrace will also be racially neutral - you will be abused regardless of your skin colour.

The verbal discontent Neymar felt on the pitch on Sunday was 100% because he acted like a total fanny, had he not done so and played as well as he did, then he would probably been applauded by the Scots, however he didn't and he definitely wasn't.

There is a good lesson to be learned from this - don't act like a small girl with a stupid haircut in front of 40,000 drunk men in tartan skirts. If Elton John had walked on to the pitch do you think he would have received a better welcome, probably not and the last time I looked he was white.

I sincerely hope Neymar learns from this but I somehow doubt it.

The banana skin was thrown from the Brazilian supporters end, by a German.

Not sure what that says about anything, nothing probably, but its what actually happened.

The Queue - Part 2

Doncaster, Sunday night, very late.

His thumbs were a blur of teenage texting and the girl leaning on the counter had a face caked in what looked like at least an inch or two of make up. It was an immature attempt to look natural and/or sexy but had exactly the opposite effect - she ended up looking like a sulky, latex, balloon faced caricature of the ugly teenage girl which she was.

They spoke in their own feral language which at times vaguely resembled English and were so utterly absorbed in texting, chatting and sneering at the world, in fact anything but their job, that they failed to spot the large, well dressed, but crumpled looking man waiting to be served.

His face was the picture of stress and he nervously kept glancing at his watch. He was the only customer and after standing there for a while it became clear they had very little interest in serving him.

A large fist banged on the counter and that got their attention. They sulkily put away their respective phones and looked in his direction.

‘Uhuh?’ this was all long way from the ‘good evening Sir, my name is Chaz, welcome to McDonalds, how can I help you?’ they learned in fast food school, day one.

‘I need chicken nuggets, 3 portions of chips, 2 quarter pounders and three diet cokes. Also can you be quick as I need to catch a train in 10mins?’

He had travelled for 7 hours by train to end up in this restaurant. 4 of these hours were spent stuck in a field with no power, no heating, no food, it was sub zero outside whilst the men charged with fixing the overhead lines which had come crashing down 30mins into the journey idly rubbed their respective chins and drank tea pondering the problem.

He had two children with him and had just spent the weekend desperately trying to recover the sense of fun which had been promised to them for months. The weekend was a write off and now the journey home was starting to become serious.

They eventually called up a reserve engine, one which doesn’t depend on overhead power, and were dragged up to the grimmest town in already very grim North.

At least Doncaster had a fast food option next to the station as they waited 10mins for their connection.

It was -10c outside, the kids were tired, hungry and their sense of adventure had disappeared a long time ago.

Suffice it to say balloon face had chosen the wrong time and wrong customer to play sulky teenager with.

2 days later, Lille Railway station, very early.

‘Noh!’ French Chaz replied through her nose, her lips didn’t move, a particularly annoying ability, unique to our Gallic neighbors which basically said fuck off, piss off, I am better than you - lazy English pig, all with a snort of the nose.

He just stood there staring back at the frog-bitch, Parley vous English had been his seemingly innocuous, albeit slightly pathetic, question.

It was 7.30am, he had been travelling for 2days trying to get home.

A HD, plasma, flat screen, Technicolor fantasy involving a machete and her skull was running through his head. Please just give me the fucking coffee.

He wearily held his hand out and she snatched the correct coins before eventually passing him the warm drink.

This was the final leg of a journey which started the moment he waved goodbye to the boys on the train. At least they are safe he thought as their train pulled away, little knowing they had just embarked on their own adventure.

He took the coffee and trudged towards the TGV, crowds of people rushed around, similar to himself, large trolley bags all sporting the same white tags. A three letter acronym which marked them - LHR.

Finding his reserved seat, he relaxed, sipped his coffee and idly watched as the train pulled out of a depressingly grey and frozen Lille main station. As he did so his mind pondered the weekend and the catalogue, the bumper Littlewoods Christmas edition, of problems they had faced.

The Friday night 8 hour marathon flight from Zurich to London, the last minute round trip Allan had to take, London to Glasgow and back with the boys. The ice-skating car park which should have been the M25, the cancelled football match and the unscheduled overnight in picturesque Reading. The cancelled US trip, the 12 hour marathon broken train journey they had to endure, the ferry, the snow, the cold and the ice.

It was a weekend to remember or forget but more than likely remember, the highlight being a trip to the cinema and after totting up the bill it could easily be the most expensive night at the movies ever.

I have talked about the fragility of our current lifestyles before and this pre-Christmas weekend only serves to reinforce my view. It only takes the slightest of complications and the world as we know it stops. A dusting of snow in certain places can ruin a whole holiday period, a decent dump of the white stuff can stop a city or two. An unpronounceable volcano can interrupt the whole of Europe.

The Chaz’s of this world don’t care and why should they? Most people do however and I sometimes wonder what would happen if other things we take so much for granted suddenly stopped working – or more specifically the things we have only recently started taking for granted – computers, the internet, low cost airlines, Skype, Nespresso, Simon Cowell.

What for example would happen if the internet was taken out by an e-snow storm and was down for, say, a month due to a global shortage of e-deicer?

It’s a frightening prospect isn’t it and I find myself thinking how could I protect against this? The problem with this type of thinking is my thoughts start shifting along the lines of a mid-west, nuclear bomb shelter dwelling paranoid eejit with a gun and 6months worth of supplies at the ready.

So that’s it and as I see it we have 3 options:

1. Pray it doesn’t happen again or at least not when I am travelling, am online or watching x-factor.

2. Buy a gun, go live in the mountains and shoot anyone who comes within a mile of my property.

3. Become Chaz and don’t give a shit.

Guess I should start caking on the make up now then but one thing is for sure - I guarantee I will do a better job than Chaz.